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There are all sorts of ideas that surely cannot work but they do.
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There are all sorts of ideas that surely cannot work but they do.
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This is how it works. Damian gives me a bunch of CD’s. I look through them and say "Never ‘eard of ’em, never ‘eard of ’em, never ‘eard of ’em". Sometimes I go home and whack them on the CD player, drooling at the palpable promise and tangible threat of new music. Sometimes however, I go home and whack them on top of the CD player and spend the next week occasionally thinking "Oh shit I was supposed to be reviewing those CD’s."
The week after that sees the start of a metamorphosis for those ominous discs now keeping the dust off my stereo. They start to mutate and grow. What may, in fact, be a perfectly agreeable piece of quirky, jagged pop, twists unheard in to a terrifying triple album by a super group made up of Peter Andre, Kenny G, and the 3 least hairy members of Chicago; and I don’t care who you are, that is something that you don’t want to listen to.
‘Some Cities’ by Doves, through no fault of it’s own, falls in to that second category. It was just bad luck. Eventually I steeled myself, donned my gloves and helmet and prepared myself for the ordeal ahead.
Within the first few bars, I’m interested. Dumb, dumpy, thumpy drums, monotone, downstroke guitars soon joined by a scruffy tambourine and a second guitar with a cleaner sound and a dirtier, Lou Reed, New York feel. The layers keep getting slapped down and lapped up and it makes for a powerful mixture as it towers on to an anxious ending. The lyrics are more well sung than well hung, but the jury’s still out. 5 minutes ago I was having trouble getting the energy together to listen to anything and now I’m chin rubbingly intrigued and wishing I’d done it 2 weeks ago.
Next up is ‘Black & White Town‘ and it’s an odd little goody bag of thumpy drums (though not as dumb and dumpy as before) and spaced out keys, both fat and airy, underpinned by more great guitar sounds. I don’t know if they’ll thank me for saying it, but it reminded me of Tears For Fears. I mean it in the nicest possible way. It’s got a stupid haircut, but it’s been brought up well. You could introduce it to your parents and they wouldn’t necessarily like it, but they wouldn’t hate it and forbid you to marry it like they did when you brought The Dead Kennedys home.
The sounds, as the album unravels, are a constant source of pleasure. ‘Snowden’ has little melodies sweeter than flowers for Granny but still finds space for some truly ugly, spitting guitars. ‘The Storm’ takes some initially smooth strings and rogers them soundly in a way that makes you unsure if you really heard what you thought you heard, then throws a few random noises in your path along with a huge wailing harmonica. It’s all a bit disconcerting. The tempo has dropped right out of the album, but I’ve only just noticed, and there are all sorts of ideas that surely cannot work but they do.
This holds true as the record progresses, with the exception of perhaps ‘Shadow Of Salford’ which has less surprises and although its predecessor ‘Someday Soon’ isn’t my cup of tea, it still has an unorthodox arrangement that keeps me on my toes.
‘Sky Starts Falling’ blows the dust off a bit, with more great drumming the foundation and punctuation for beautiful messy layers of guitar and vocals. ‘Ambition’, I’m afraid, lets the side down a little, it’s pedestrian and wistful. I’ve not yet really worked out what he’s going on about but it sounds like whinging to me and perhaps I’m being a bit picky but it has an unnecessarily long last note. Still, it gives you a few minutes to nip for a wazz and pick another CD.
‘Some Cities’ was a nice surprise, it cheered me up, it has beauty, quality and originality. A few things didn’t work for me, but what it nearly always had was something unexpected round the corner and it was never an angry bear.